She might be trying to keep mum about her big bump, but fresh-faced Cheryl is also at the centre of another secret baby mystery.

The former X Factor judge looked like she was having a swell time when she and toyboy Liam Payne showed off her blooming figure at a charity event earlier this week.

But while she’s determined to stay tight-lipped publicly - there’s no denying she’s had family on the mind.

For as the world is speculating on when Liam, 23, might need to get decorating their spare room, Cheryl now reveals how she’s actually been preoccupied with another baby secret - after discovering her grandma was the illegitimate child of a housemaid and the master of the house.

The 33-year-old was delving into her family history as she filmed BBC’s Who Do You Think You Are?.

And after years of saying she was “put on this earth to be a mother”, discovering the tragic stories of pregnancies in her family’s past has been particularly poignant.

Not only did her four times great grandfather perish at sea when his wife was pregnant – meaning he never got to meet his son – but she was also shocked by the story of her grandma being considered illegitimate - because her great grandma was the hired help.

Some shocking family secrets were uncovered (Image: WENN)

The mystery surrounded her great grandfather (Image: WENN)

The fact that the master of the house never made an honest woman of her would have been a scandal in that age, and caused a shutdown in communication with the family which has spanned several generations.

Cheryl’s mother Joan knows absolutely nothing about her grandfather – even his name, Joseph Wilson Ridley, had been shielded from her, as he died before she was born and was never, ever talked about.

So for Cheryl to discover that side of her family has been especially moving.

“My mother is very much a friend. I can confide in her about anything,” says Cheryl.

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Cheryl, pictured with Joan in 1983, says she found the ancestors on her mum's side 'mysterious' (Image: BBC)

Cheryl wasn't aware of the family history at all (Image: WENN)

'I never heard stories, I never heard tales' (Image: WENN)

“But it just feels a bit more mysterious on her side of the family. I never heard stories, I never heard tales.

“I find it like pretty amazing that my Mam’s grandfather has been completely forgotten, considering he fought in the First World War. You would think there would be tales and stuff like that passed down but nobody seems to know anything.”

Joan recalls that any questions about her grandmother’s former husband would result in them being told “children should be seen and not heard”.

But now Cheryl knows it was because her great grandfather Joseph was ostracised by his own family after his wife, Mary Ann, died in 1930 and two years later, aged 50, he fathered twin girls (one of whom is Cheryl’s grandmother Olga) with his housekeeper, Cheryl’s great-grandma Edith Annie Burton.

Her grandfather Joseph hired the maid to help out with his nine children (Image: WENN)

A well-off former soldier, Joseph worked in the Co-op and had hired her as a maid for his home in County Durham to help look after the nine children. After she gave birth to Olga and twin Rene, society at the time would have expected him to do the right thing, and marry her. But that never happened.

It was th

Joseph was dubbed 'old man Ridley' (Image: WENN)

anks to Cheryl’s distant relative Yvonne Ridley - the journalist captured by the Taliban in 2001 who later converted to Islam - that she learnt how Joseph was also a mystery to his first family, and even dubbed “Old man Ridley”. They believed him to have had a quick temper, be a troubled personality and to have been a big drinker.

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“My great Nanna must have been the young housekeeper who got involved with old man Ridley,” Cheryl says.

Before falling for the housekeeper, Cheryl has now learnt that Joseph had also been a war hero - and had fought in the Battle of the Somme, Britain bloodiest battle in history.

He volunteered at the age of 33, joining the Durham Light Infantry in December of 1914, when he was sent to France.

“It’s actually surreal to think that we’re stood here a hundred years later with the luxuries we now have, because of their sacrifice,” Cheryl says with feeling.

She now wonders whether it was what he saw in the war, which earned him the reputation of being ‘troubled’.

“He was a kind of a mystery,” she says. “He may have had a bit of a reputation afterwards of being a little bit disturbed - he probably didn’t want to talk about his war stories.

"I think there was a lot of men who didn’t really talk about their experiences. And I would guess part of it was because my great-grandma was his housekeeper and in those days having children out of wedlock was seriously frowned upon.

“Back in them days nobody knew about post-traumatic stress or really understood or even cared about the aftercare for soldiers that survived. So I’m really not surprised that he was drinking excessively, he probably needed some form of escape.

“And I’m sure that you would become quite an angry person after you’d experienced some of the horrific things they did here.”

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Understanding the mystery of her grandma’s birth was only one part of what Cheryl has learnt about her family.

On her father’s side, she learnt that her four times great grandfather, John Wood Laing, was a seaman.

“It’s interesting, because I hate the sea,” she says. “I’ve always been afraid of it. I used to have really bad dreams when I was little about drowning in the sea, being an old woman with a headscarf on and I was the old woman. Isn’t that weird?”

It’s made more strange by what happened to John. After rising through the ranks to become a Master – which meant he could captain a ship - he was able to move him and wife Caroline from the cramped, working-class area of North Shields to a posher part of town.

“I feel really, really proud of him making a better life for his wife and children. I feel like, in a way, that’s kind of what happened to me. Hard work pays off,” says Cheryl.

But when he was just 32, in the August of 1857, tragedy befell his maiden voyage as captain. He had sailed to Quebec, Canada on a ship called La Belle. As master, he was able to hand-pick his crew and chose to take his younger brother James. All went well on the outward journey but when the ship set sail for the return leg to England disaster struck.

The vessel was last seen on the St. Lawrence River in November 1857 – and never heard of again. They were all presumed to have drowned in icy waters.

It meant John was never able to meet his son – Cheryl’s three times great grandfather – who was named after his father, John Wood Laing Jr.

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Another of Cheryl's ancestors, tragic John Wood Laing and his wife Caroline (Image: BBC)

Following her husband’s death, Caroline suffered a dramatic fall in circumstance and the census of 1861 lists her as a charwoman.

“She came from poverty and then went back to poverty,” says Cheryl.

“John never saw his little boy. That’s so sad. I was hoping he had a long and successful carer and that his kids and Caroline would be set up for life. I feel sad now. I feel that I got a sense of them as a couple and they were really madly in young love.”

'Sad' Cheryl found the whole thing quite a shock (Image: WENN)

After showing that bump at the London carol concert this week, the tragedy will no doubt linger in her mind.

Yet the singer has no regrets about unearthing the family mysteries.

“This whole experience has really told me that it’s true when they say Northerners are made of tough stuff,” she says.

Having always seen herself as a Geordie through and through, she adds: “There’s just a great sense of resilience and strength there, and the fact that I’m from the North East all that time ago, on both sides, is proof to me that what I thought and felt is the truth.”